Tombstone Summoner
by dionysianDaydream
Summary: As children we made a deal with death that changed the course of our lives forever. Even if the odds are stacked against us, we will make things right. *All jokes aside, I really like this one.*
1. Reunion

She had been the sole resident of room 14 of the Endsville Asylum B Ward for four years when I was discharged from duty and could return home, feeling less like the snot-nosed boy quivering in his army greens I was when I left, and more like a man who has been molded into something more.

"She's gone, man. That girl is absolutely batshit insane." One of the caretakers tells me as he was leading me through a confounding maze of hallways, the agonized screams of the real whackos and crazies reverberating off the walls as we went.

"She won't shut up about demons and how the end is near." He says, flailing his arms around like the damn Sophomore he was. When I tell him that I still wanted to see her despite the warnings, he laughs. "Well that's your call, buddy. I'm warning you though - she isn't right in the head. Not by a long shot."

The more time I spent with this guy, the stronger my urge was to shove the knife in my right boot down his goddamn throat, but I took a deep breath and held it in. Be like regular old Billy, I said to myself, don't be _I have seen entire fucking villages be blown up and stacks of dead men, women and children tall enough to cast a shadow_ Billy. Or else they'd lock me away too, and then she wouldn't be the only one up shit creek without a paddle.

"Here's your stop, big fella." The jack ass says as he unlocks the door to Room 13 of Ward B. As he opens it he starts to run through the safety procedures again but I just wave it off and shove past him, which I guess was a fair enough indicator that I wanted him to piss off because he does.

Once the door slams shut behind him, I am left alone with a girl quietly gazing out the loosely barred window.

"I wish I could have come back sooner." I say, although the Mandy I knew was never satisfied with apologies. But, as I looked around the room I wondered just how much these freakin' sociopaths change her over the past nearly half a decade.

Drawings are glued to nearly every wheelchair accessible space on the four walls, all of them featuring pale white skulls against chaotic, colorful backgrounds scribbled out in pen, pencil, crayon, or whatever the heck else she could get her hands on.

She must have known it caught my attention, because the first thing I hear come out of her mouth is an explanation for her sudden artistic inspiration.

"I still see him after all these years." She said as she turned her wheelchair around to look at me, in a voice as weak as she looked: pale, thin, and with rounded stubs where her legs had once been. "I feel him, Billy, and I know you feel him too."

"Yeah, he's growing stronger." I say, and I wasn't lying either. The best way to describe it is like the heat you feel when you stand near an oven, only it was less intense and I felt it throughout my entire body. This sixth sense is what brought me back home, back to her. In a way this shared sense inextricably linked us.

"We have to stop him."

Although as timid looking as a person on the verge of breaking in more ways than one, the confidence in her voice was clear. From our short exchange I already knew we were on the same page, and nothing more had to be discussed about him and our desire for revenge against him.

Him, the hellborn entity that made Mandy like this by taking away her legs and her soul if such a thing exists. Later we could talk about Grim, but for now we would take baby steps in piecing together our shattered lives, even if it was just long enough to retrieve what was lost.

We were going to get back what Grim stole from us.

I take off my sunglasses and look into her sunken black eyes. They still possessed the same dark and very Mandy allure they did when I last saw her. "First things first, I'm breaking you out of this hellhole." I said, and God help whoever would dare get in our way.


	2. Revisit

We took the next train out of town when it turned out the guys at the asylum weren't willing to contest a claim to one of their longest staying patients.

I carry Mandy outside on my back and, as she took her first few breaths of unconditional freedom since God knows when, I dared to ask her snarkiness what they were like.

"Like what? How they smell? Taste? The air is worse than I remember. Smells like it's going to rain hydrochloric acid. And, it smells like you need to invest in some deodorant."

Good old Mandy.

"If you're just gonna bitch about everything, maybe I should've let you stay locked up." I say with a laugh.

"What happened to the water tower?" She points at the tall, scorched looking metal structure situated on a forested cliff that overlooks downtown Endsville.

"Looks like it got struck by lightning." ...is my first guess. The great black blot was now present over half of its surface was indicative enough, and the bolt must have been huge. "Haven't been back in town for more than a day, so I wouldn't know."

She doesn't say anything else until we get to the bus stop just outside of the traditional black iron fence that bordered the Asylum premises.

"Did they work you hard in Iraq, Billy?"

"Afghanistan."

"Same shit, right?"

Pretty much.

...

The first half of the bus ride feels about as awkward as I expected. We hadn't spoken for so long that it would take time for us to feel comfortable in each other's company again, even though we were the only persons on that bus.

She mostly just stares out the window, commenting on the little things she notices have changed over the years like the new Burger King they built on Main Street or the restoration job on the school we used to go to. But after a while, she shares with me her interest in how many things remained virtually the same.

"Everything has that drab, gray look to it. Bored, dull." ...all words that could be used to describe the expression on her face. "Lifeless is the word I would use to describe it."

"The orphanage is still like that. Broken windows and all."

She turns to me sharply.

"Which reminds me, I haven't been there in a long time."

So we got off at the orphanage and immediately, memories began flooding back to me.

To think, we lived in this rickety, rundown roach infested old shithole for six years. It was here that Mandy and I first met, and it was also where we met him.

It is an old fashioned two story countryhouse with a wide front porch leading to a chipped, engraved dark cedar double door. The walls are painted in a clashing white paint job that is peeling off all over, but to my recollection had never been complete since the day I first learned that I was to call this pathetic shack 'home'.

And here I am now, Big Boy Billy gone to war and come back, just to end up right back where he started...

Mandy, who hangs on to me with her arms draped over my shoulders, tugs at my shirt to get my attention.

"Having fond memories?" She asks, and I don't have to see the sarcastic grin to know it was there.

"Bull fuckin' shit."

"Wanna check if the cellar doors are open?"

"Doesn't look like anybody's home, so maybe if we're lucky." I tell her, and feel my heart rate quicken at the thought of going down there again but at the same time I knew that I had no choice.

...

I find us a way into the back yard through a gap in the tall picket fence. After helping Mandy through, we're surprised to see how much the previous owners decided to leave behind.

There's the swingset...that toy tractor I used to fight with that one kid over...the ole tire swing is still hanging...that stuffed bear looks familiar...

It was like a nostalgic scavenger hunt, but checking out some long forgotten toys wasn't why we were here, so we didn't dawdle for long.

No siree. The main event was waiting for us in the space below the house, just past a pair of crooked cellar doors.

One problem: they were padlocked shut.

"Hold on, these are rusty as hell."

I set Mandy down on the grass, whip out the combat knife in my shoe and get to work repeatedly grating it against one of the chains.

"What will we do if the circle's still there?"

"I'll destroy it myself."

"What if...it's still there?" She asks hesitantly.

I flash the knife at her. "Then I'll kill it. Myself."

"You don't have to prove to me that you're stronger now than you were when you were eleven."

As I feel my anger rising, I take it out on the chain, which is surprisingly resilient. "If I were stronger back then, you'd still have your legs, and he would still be alive."

"Don't be so hard on yourself. You were just a kid, Billy."

"Well, so were you-"

The chain breaks in half, startling me. I put the knife back into its sheath, but keep it on hand. You know, just in case.

We both just sit there looking into the murky depths of the cellar for a solid minute. It's weird, like, the same emotion just came over both of us. No, we couldn't just go; we had to take a moment to breathe and prepare ourselves first.

"Well, let's go." Mandy finally says.


	3. Milkshakes

"There's no going back now, Billy."

"I know. But, we have to try...for her." Billy says, more for his own benefit than anything.

The body of a recently deposed feline lay at the center of a sigil drawn unto the flat cement foundation by a red crayon. Kneeling at two opposite sides of the sigil are Billy and Mandy at eleven years old, with the latter still in possession of all her limbs.

At the same time they both clap their hands together then after hesitating briefly, the children lay their palms flat against the wax-marked floor.

"Wait!"

The children look up, pulling their hands away from the floor.

A third child - one bespectacled boy with slicked black hair covering one eye - runs toward them, from leaning against the wall where he had been watching, squeezing his beloved teddy bear so tightly that its eyebuttons were beginning to come loose.

"You changed your mind, Nergal?" Mandy asks in disbelief.

The boy nods decisively, and joins them kneeling around the sigil.

...

A photograph on a dresser features a dozen children lined up dressed in matching grey uniforms. A young Billy stands next to a wheelchair bound and legless young Mandy whose arms are wrapped around a teddy bear, at the center of the shot.

"Humankind can not gain anything without first giving something of equal value. That is the first law of summoning." Says Mandy off-screen.

Tongues of fire are reflected on the glass face of the photograph.

"Back then, we thought that was life's one and only truth."

...

Young Mandy cuts her palm with a kitchen knife and the blood sprinkles over the makeshift magical mark.

"That should be enough, right?" Mandy says, and looks between the two expectantly. "Well, aren't you going to contribute?"

"I thought you said that was enough." Billy protests, but Mandy slides the knife across the ground to him.

"I meant for me, stupid." She casts a sharp look at Nergal. "Put that bear away. This is neither the time nor place for snuggling."

Billy yelps as the rusty blade rips through his flesh, making Mandy and Nergal flinch.

His pouring blood creates a small puddle on the floor.

"Looks like Billy gave enough blood for the both of you. Well..."

She stops to inspect the intricate design of the sigil she stayed up all night drawing, one last time. It was her first time attempting a summon this extravagant, but she could not allow Billy the slightest whiff of her uncertainty, an objective made all the more difficult considering that big wonking nose of his. Milkshakes was his cat after all, whose eternal soul was now on the line.

"Are we really gonna do this?" Nergal asks.

Mandy presses her hands against the floor again. "For Milkshakes."

Billy nods. "For Milkshakes."

Nergal nods at each of them then, after clapping his hands together he presses his hands unto the floor, letting his teddy bear slide off his lap and fall to the ground.

...

We were just kids, and she was our best friend. That's all that mattered.

...

"Mandy! What did I tell you about playing with that boy?"

An eight year old Mandy winces expectantly, but this time her father did not hit her. That would come later, somewhere where no one would see. Not out here in the school parking lot.

"Why can't he just be my friend, daddy?"

Daddy. The word stung worse than the tender pink slashes flayed across her back like the territorial clawmarks of a wild bear. It was what she had to call him in public so as to keep up the facade of a warm and loving, perfectly normal family he had invented, to cover up the truth about his private world.

"I've already explained this to you a dozen times. You serve a special purpose, and you are not to be tarnished in preparation for it." I try to look away but he just pulls me back. "It's for the good of mankind, Mandy."

That's what he always said. And whenever he did, I knew that there would be lashings. "For the good of mankind" ironically made me begin to slowly hate all of mankind, and to this day I haven't learned what he meant by it.

Eventually the secrets behind our perfect family, and the true identity of my father were released when, as I hear it, my mother had evidently grown so jealous of my father's many affairs that she felt the need to get back at him in the worst way possible.

As everyone in Endsville would come to learn as a result, these affairs were actually endorsed by the Satanic cult my father had secretly been a member of since before I was born. And he was the Head Priest of the Endsville chapter so, in other words, he twisted the rules to justify his own sleeping with multiple women, many of which were underage. Very classy.

He told me from birth that I must lead a clean life, detached from the trappings of an ordinary life. 'Friends' were excessive. 'Fun' was excessive. Disobedience was 'sin'. Being raised like this, I rebelled every chance I could get and it made me cold, uncaring, aloof. By the time social services could stick me in the orphanage, I was practically soulless.

But that all began to change when I met Billy, who as fate would have it was already living at the orphanage.

I first saw him sitting at the back of the lunch hall all alone, occasionally glancing at something under the table or on his lap. Being the new kid, I figured my best bet to gain some notoriety among the other kids was to humiliate somebody. I figured the big nosed kid with the Mickey Mouse hat and cheap Salvation Army denim jacket was an easy target.

"What exactly are you doing?" I asked, taking a seat across from him.

I remember he looked up sharply, brow sweating, mouth puckered awkwardly; his stupid guilty face.

"Nothing. I'm not doing anything."

"So does that mean you're just sitting here playing with your Johnson?"

Billy gave me a confused look, like he wasn't sure if I was letting him off the hook or not. "Johnson?" He asked with as much uncertainty underlying it as Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski.

"You know, your little Billy."

He still just shrugged. The dip. Seeing that there was no sense in making fun of a boy too stupid to know what he was being laughed at for, I took a more direct approach.

"So what's that you got there anyway?" I lean over the table and catch a glimpse of his backpack before he hides it underneath his crossed arms. "Come on, I just want a peek."

"I don't want you telling nobody."

"But I would never do that!" I lie, pretending to be offended. It was the old guilt trip tactic, and it seemed to work because then he started to get real fidgety, like he was suddenly conflicted.

"Fine." The sucker says after some thought, and once he was sure no one was watching, let me look into his bag, with a strange warning. "Just don't scare her."

Assuming that he was referring to something stupid like a ladybug, I was surprised to see a pink, furry animal poke its head up.

"Is this...a cat?"

"Yeah. I found her outside, in the bushes. I think I'm gonna call her Milkshakes."

I was awestruck. I had never been this close to a real life cat before, because my father strictly forbade it.

"Well, how do you know it's a girl?" I asked, as Milkshakes was rubbing her head against my fingers.

"She doesn't have a dinger, that's how."

A dinger. That's what he called it. What was I expecting?

"She's swell, isn't she, uhh..." He trails off with one finger on his lower lip.

I roll my eyes. "My name is Mandy, dipshit. And don't you dare forget it." Milkshake purrs as she licked my fingertips. That sandpapery texture I felt for the first time creeped me out.

"Alrighty then, Mandy dipshit. How's about we be friends?"

...

A sliver of electricity that was like a lightning bolt straight out of Hell, blue like my mother's eyes, flies out of the ground. Straight out of our handmade gate to Hell.

"It's working, Billy. Sweet pudding it's working!"

I glance at his smiling profile, then at Nergal, who had a weird expression I couldn't decipher. Perhaps if I did, we would have stopped right then and none of this would have ever happened.

"Nergal?"

The sparks flicker, leaving behind grey scorchmarks as they bounce off the walls. The faint smell of something burning fills the cramp cellar.

"Milkshakes!" Billy screams at the blue blaze glowing at the center of the sigil.

...it was only then that I knew something had gone horribly wrong.


	4. Dirty Business, Part 1

As the pale blue flash of light dissapated, a sharp pain swept over my body starting from the lower half of my left leg. When I looked I realized with horror that the whole leg was gone; instantly snatched away by the dreadful circle and replaced by a bloody stump.

It was equivalent exchange - my leg for the life of an alley cat; our poor innocent Milkshakes who was taken away from us in an instant - there when Billy and I became friends in the first place - and yet here we thought a few drops of blood would suffice.

We suffered because we were children trapped in the illusion that all lives are worth saving.

"Nergal? Billy?"

I could hear them both screaming, but could not see through the dense smoke that was still rising from the summoning circle. Not to mention the bulb of the only light in the basement had shattered when a stray electric bolt hit it, so my eyes had to rely on the pale moonlight seeping in through a tiny window.

Lying in a prone position, I turned around to witness the same kicking and screaming Nergal that would haunt my nightmares to this very day.

"It's pulling me in, Mandy! Help!" he yelled, as dark tentacles roped around his wrists and ankles, then his neck; slowly dragging him toward the glowing blue gate to Hell.

I only had a few seconds to think, and even less time to scrawl another circle unto the floor with the dull piece of chalk I had tucked in my pocket.

He looked to me pleadingly.

"They're going to take me, Mandy! Please don't let them take me!"

I cringe now, remembering how his fingernails bled from how desperately he clawed at the cement floor to try and free himself, as I hastily drew a second circle on the bare knee of my one remaining leg.

It is then that I looked up briefly, and caught a glimpse of Billy.

He was curled up in the corner with his face hidden in his hands, sobbing.

...

A photograph on a dresser features a dozen children lined up dressed in matching grey uniforms. A young Billy stands next to a wheelchair bound and legless young Mandy whose arms are wrapped around a teddy bear, at the center of the shot.

"Humankind can not gain anything without first giving something of equal value. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is the first law of summoning." Says Mandy off-screen.

Tongues of fire are reflected on the glass face of the photograph.

"Back then, we thought that was life's one and only truth."

...

Billy and I could not stay in that basement for long, as our memories of that night sunk deep into our bloodstreams like poison from a snake bite.

For a moment, the hard look on his face melts away as we quietly examine the dry blood stains still streaking across the floor in some places. I guess that deep down he really is still the same Billy that cowered in the corner bawling his eyes out, no matter how much he has endured.

"You know it wasn't your fault, Billy," I said to him, as the next bus we get on roars to life.

"I'd like to believe that."

He grunts, then tilts his hat so that the shade conceals his eyes.

I ask him about where our next stop will be, only to receive a vague 'to meet up with an old friend' as an answer.

The bus rolls through a dimly lit tunnel with colorful graffiti plastered on the walls, where the amplified racket of its rattling tires was almost deafening, until it turns unto a crumbling, potholed street flanked by a homely hair salon here, a discount store and a gas station soaked in the penetrating scent of diesel over there.

'Run down' is what I would call this part of Endsville, and I am overwhelmed by a strange feeling I nonetheless push to the back of my mind as when we get off at a bus stop with shattered glass panels we are greeted by a tough-looking crowd of I what smells to be heavy smokers and drinkers.

A youngish Mexican dude wearing a plain white T-shirt and baggy jeans that hang below his waist approaches us as Billy is having a tough time trying to carry me on his back, the bag with all of his stuff in it and my walker off the bus in one go.

"Here, let me help you out a little there, soldier," the guy says, stretching his arm to take the folded walker from Billy.

I can feel the muscles in his neck and shoulders tense up, but thankfully he does not protest. This is definitely not a good place to pick a fight - our hombre's friends were watching nearby, with their backs leaned against a shiny black convertible parked on the sidewalk; rocking their heads to the beat of festive Spanish music blaring on the radio.

Unfortunately the other guy doesn't know when to leave us alone.

"Hey man, do you need anything?" He asks, deliberately blocking our way.

"Do I look like someone with a lawn that needs mowing?" Billy tries to sidestep past, but he just moves in front of him again.

"C'mon, you know what I'm talking about."

He retrieves from his pocket a small plastic bag filled with what looks like sugar, but I'll much sooner attempt to ride a bicycle down main street than believe that that's actually what it is.

Billy seizes him by his shirt collar, and pulls him so close to his face that I can smell the cologne beneath the bar stank.

"Get the hell out of my face with that shit," he snarls.

"Billy..."

From the corner of my eye I can see the crew by the convertible getting antsy, and pinch Billy's shoulder to get his attention when a series of clicks sound off in my ear, coming from the opposite direction.

I turn to look and see three black guys standing further down the sidewalk, three loaded handguns pointed our way.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and another rock.

"You _Diablos_ should know better than to be stepping on our turf," one of the guys from the pistol packing second gang says in a deep voice, as he takes a step forward. "And you there - soldier boy!"

He cocks his head at Billy, grinning with what I gather to be amusement.

"Welcome home, brother."

Billy walks over to him and to my surprise they knock knuckles like old friends.

"So this is the kind of shit you've been up to since they sent you home, huh Irwin?"


	5. Dirty Business, Part 2

Billy here.

Irwin gave us a ride (he somehow got his hands on a shiny blue Camaro with that damn new car smell, but I won't ask any questions) while we did a little catching up. We've just taken a turn unto a busy interstate.

"I remember you two and that Nergal guy were like, the three weird kids from the orphanage everyone in school wouldn't shut up about," he said, handling the steering wheel with one arm while the other is hanging out the windowsill. "You know, that place was pretty fucked up. I hear they shut it down after one of the kids there wound up dead."

"No shit?" I said, snatching one of his cigarettes as I did so.

"Yeah, man. It happened while we were out shooting sand people. So it goes that one of the nuns 'accidentally' thrashed a boy to death, and they stuffed the body in a chicken coop so no one would find out."

"There's one rumor I'll believe. That place was hell."

"A couple of nuns were really that bad?"

I snorted. 'Nuns'. That's what most outsiders called the ladies that ran the Sunny Smiles orphanage, but anyone who grew up there would know they were more like witches.

As a prime example they used to keep chickens in the backyard supposedly for their eggs, but that wasn't all. They would constantly threaten kids who were misbehaving with an overnight stay at one of the 'coop chapels', is what they called them. And don't get me started on the many wonderful ways they knew how to torment a child with a yard ruler, a tire iron, or their bare hands. They were fucking sadists.

But that was in the past. Back when Endsville was...slightly less gloomy.

"What are you guys still doing in Endsville anyway?" Irwin asked, after what had been a long, awkward silence. "You don't see a lot of old faces around here anymore since shit hit the fan, after the depression."

I exhaled warm smoke through my nostrils. I swear, nothing beats a cig, or gives me a greater sense of clarity once the nicotine and whatever else kicks in.

"We're here because we've got a score to settle." I would have said more, but I wanted to hold off until we were behind closed doors.

Mandy gets it. She leans forward from the back seat so that her face comes in between us, to the rescue.

"So, Irwin. If everyone's jumping town, what's holding you back?"

Irwin laughs at this and narrowly misses the white van in front of us, when it suddenly pulls to a stop in the middle of our lane.

"Let's just say I'm a leading supplier of the Endsville area's high demand for...alternative recreational substances."

I look into the rearview mirror.

The driver of the van is leaning out of the window talking to a guy at the wheel of a pink ferrari in the lane next to him, pointing in our direction furiously. They are wearing matching red bandanas.

"So you're a drug dealer now?" Mandy sighs. "Seriously, Irwin..."

The man in the pink ferrari burns rubber and pulls toward us at full throttle.

"Sorry, baby." Irwin says to Mandy, then takes a pair of sunglasses out of the central glove compartment and puts them on. "I guess you can say...I prefer to live on the wild side."

He guns the engine, which throws Mandy and I back in our seats. Going from twenty to one hundred and twenty in less than five seconds with a clear lane ahead of us, I watch until it isn't long before the pink cadillac disappears from sight.

"What in the deep fried hell was that about?" Mandy snaps, but Irwin is still cool as ice.

"Just some punk from a rival gang. Don't worry your pretty self over it."

I'm not gonna lie - I was beginning to think crewing up with Irwin was a bad move.

But if not him, who else could I turn to?

...

On a hill overlooking the very same interstate, what could best be described as a smoking hot redneck looks up from a pair of binoculars.

"Billy and Mandy?" She says aloud, even though there is no one else in the beat-up bronze sedan with her. "What is he doing back in town? And, that crazy bitch...who let her out of the nuthouse?"

Resting in the front passenger seat is badge, but the crest is not that of the FBI, the CIA, and she certainly isn't part of the local police, which as Irwin might say can't tell their asses from a hole in the ground. No, this girl belongs to something else.

Her phone rings right on schedule. She answers it without wasting her breath on a hello, since it was a private line.

"Venus reporting in. I have just confirmed a visual on our objective. He is driving along Interstate nine going West in what I suspect to be a stolen blue Camaro, along with two other persons."

"This is Saturn." The artificially deepend voice on the other end says. "Do you recognize the passengers?"

"Yes, I may have a positive identification," Mindy can't help but crack a grin as she says. "As fate would have it, they may be old friends of mine."

"You know what to do."

...

Long after Mindy had hung up and set out on foot, a homeless man would come across the same sedan later that evening. He of course thought that an abandoned car is a huge step up from snoozing at the bottom of any old dumpster, or kicking back underneath a noisy highway ramp. As he approached it, however; an overwhelming odor of rotting meat greeted him.

Curious about the origin of the strange stench, he would peer through the driver's seat window and see nothing inside.

At that point he was content to just give up and go home, but there was still one place left to check.

And so he would then go around to check the trunk, and immediately wretch for the lack of clean oxygen and then gasp. For there, protruding from a hole in one of the busted tail-lights, was a shrivelled up human arm painted dark red in streaks of dried blood.


	6. Petty Acts of Pudding

In an alleyway, Officer Playfair watches as two deputies wail on a homeless dude dressed in a potato sack; kicking, punching, and headbutting him repeatedly.

"Think our friend's had enough yet, boys?" One of the deputies asks for no reason, because the smug grin on his face is answer enough.

"Teach 'im good what happens to folks who piss in public!" Fairplay cheers.

"My lord, forgive them for their crimes!" The homeless man cries, clasping his hands in prayer and staring up at the starless night sky. "They know not what they do!"

"Shut the hell up, and don't say the lord's name in vain God damn it!"

A deputy slams the homeless guy in his chest. He lurches forward, coughing up blood.

Playfair laughs wildly with the others, but clams up when a light shines on the wall, as a car drove past. After a while it reverses, and comes to a stop in the middle of the street in front of the alleyway's entrance.

"I'll go check it out."

One of the deputies walks toward the suspicious vehicle, as three figures emerge from it.

...

Irwin helped us find a place to sleep - at a shitty complex downtown, sure, but it still beat living in a nuthouse - and it was there that I told him everything about what happened that night.

Interestingly enough, he didn't seem to doubt a word of the story that earned me a cell at Endsville Pen.

"Let me get this straight," Irwin said. "Basically, what you're saying is...you conjured up something nasty when you tried to raise Billy's cat from the dead, and it's been floating around Endsville, building up its strength ever since."

"That's the bare gist of it," Billy said, as he was packing away the last of the groceries into the fridge. It's not like we got all that much, though: bologna sandwiches, macaroni and cheese and corn puffs cereal were in our future, at least until Billy could find a job, or someone was willing to hire a legless, certified insane person.

In any case, we I pushed those worries aside for the time being. The way Irwin crinkled his eyebrows told me I wasn't finished explaining things yet.

"So Nergal got done in by a motherfucking...demon? I knew something weird was up when he stopped showing up to class, but Jesus."

I remember looking to where my right leg had once been, and sighing. Those weren't happy memories I'd had to recall lately, after trying for so long to repress them.

"No, he didn't die," I said to him. "Not exactly. That's part of what brought us here."

...

Three days later,

Mandy saw a cop flashing his badge at them, as Billy helped her from the back seat of the stolen Camaro.

"Get back into the car! You are interfering with official police busi-"

Irwin slugged him in the face before he could finish, and he went out like a light.

"Yo, Pud'n," Irwin said, pointing to the cop sitting on the hood of their squad car, who was staring at him like he'd just seen an unarmed black teenager.

"Oh, hey Irwin," Officer Fairplay said nervously.

"Don't 'hey Irwin' me like you don't know what day it is, son."

The other deputy reached for his gun but Billy found his first, and pointed it at him. "I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with you, asshole." Meanwhile, the homeless dude was crumpled up on the ground, moaning.

Fairplay was a thoroughly corrupt cop notheless uncomfortable about fraternizing with the criminal element, even if he did go to the same school - where he was twerpy shit all his classmates knew as Pud'n - with one of the biggest, baddest gangsters in Endsville:

Irwin, who beckoned him forth.

"So I've been trolling these streets with my buddies all evening, Pud'n my man, to ask if you have in fact got the goods?"

"The goods? You m-mean that stuff you wanted me to look up? Sure, it's in the car."

He slid into the front passenger seat of the squad, and rifled through the contents of the glovebox as if life depended on it. Irwin laughed because it didn't.

Mandy tapped him on the shoulder. She didn't have an iron fist or a sidearm, like the other two, but more nagging was the fact that she didn't have a clue, either. "Mind telling us what all of this is about?"

"After ya'll told me your story, I took the liberty of calling up our old pal sargeant marshmallow here, to see if he could lend us a hand."

"Lend us a hand with what?"

"H-here it is," Pud'n said, as he stretched his arm out the window to hand a manilla folder over to Irwin.

"Much obliged," Irwin said, waving at the deputy who came this close to shooting him.

He passed the folder to Mandy as they walked back to the car.

Stopping Billy under the pathetic glow of a dangling street light, she opened it and her eyes zoomed in on a photograph at the top, taken of her while she was still just another sad face living in the orphanage.

"This is a file...of me," she said.

"It says here that I was a suspect in their investigation into Nergal's disappearance."

"Those fucking asshats," Billy muttered.

Mandy could barely remember being interviewed at the hospital. Vague shapes in dark suits would show up at her bedside from time to time. Emotionless, with faces shrouded the inpenetrable fog of a young mind shattered by a severe traumatic event.

"There's a picture of Nergal's stuffed bear, listed as evidence." Mandy showed the photo to Billy, and that time Irwin was clueless.

"What's some bear got to do with anything, yo?"

"Remember when I said that Nergal wasn't really dead?" Mandy said, her eyes glowing with purpose. "As crazy as it sounds, I sealed his soul inside of that bear, so we have to get it back no matter what."

But how? Well, that part was easy, because Officer Fairplay was Pud'n.


	7. War Flashback

BWhen you're a POW it's important to keep track of the time, but it was only like a week before something I dreaded more than an Afghan general with a fetish for branding irons reared its ugly head.

It opened the barred iron door and walked - no, more like glided - toward me, in a hooded black coat that rustled softly across the packed sand of my prison.

My first thought was maybe I was just seeing things, like my mind was in a fog from days of eating nothing but stale rice, and the dull pain of cuts and bruises that still echoed throughout my body.

The guy stopped in front of me. It was a pretty tense moment let me tell you, mainly because I kept expecting him to kick me, or spit on me, or I don't know, randomly pull a tire iron out of his pocket like a fucking Looney Tune and start hitting me like a pinata with it. But that time, the hits didn't come.

Instead he leaned forward to offer me a hand, and that was when I got a good look at his face.

On it there was no skin; only hollow bone and two black holes looking down at me where eyes should have been.

At that point I knew I wasn't hallucinating.

"Grim," was all I could say.

It was surreal, though. That was the first I'd seen of him outside of my nightmares since the night we tried to bring Milkshakes back from the dead, and at a Taliban POW camp in the middle of Afghanistan no less.

He flexed his skeletal hand like he wanted me to hurry, but I glanced at my comrade lying next to me, still unconscious from a particularly vicious breakfast beating. I only joke about it now to lessen the blow of what happened next.

Sargeant Sellars was his name, and he let out a light gasp when Grim touched him on the neck.

It happened so fast, and there was nothing I could do. All it took was that one touch to make the pain go away. After all we'd endured; talking to each other about all the beer we'd drink and the chicks we'd bang once we made it back to the other side...it didn't matter. Sellars was snuffed out.

"You fucking...bastard!"

I grabbed Grim's leg, but I didn't have any strength left in me to do anything.

He must have sensed this, because then he grabbed me by the neck, and with just that one hand managed to lift me off the ground. Pretty strong for someone without an ounce of muscle weight, sure, but at least I'd been spared whatever voodoo magic bullshit he used on Sellars.

My head was spinning as he dragged me outside. We were on a hill overlooking an encampment nestled in the grassy basin below us. I saw that the soldiers that had been guarding the shack I was being held in were both dead, so I instinctively checked one for guns and ammo.

I turned with a loaded AK-47 in hand, raring to give Grim what I've been meaning to for a long time, but saw that he had already made it to the bottom of the hill.

Right now I can still picture him, standing there in the kind of sun that makes the air ripple, with those empty eyeholes fixed on me as his cloak blew in the hot desert wind.

I had to go after him. For Mandy, Nergal, Sellars, and everyone else that's been 'touched' by the bastard, I thought that I had to be the one to kill death.

...

The Taliban encampment lay in ruin. Its soldiers were cut down in a variety of different methods from what Billy could tell, as he limped through the streets after Grim.

The smell of skin seared until it turned black and started to peel filled the air, as he walked limbs and other loose body parts that were sliced off through the bone, resting in puddles of blood that soaked into the streets of sand and rock and turned them red.

He jumped back when a body fell out of an upstairs window, splitting in half horizontally as it fell in a cascade of gore, and blood that sprayed unto his face and bare chest.

"What the hell happened?"

Billy had seen his fair share of battlefields, but this was unlike any he'd ever seen before. This was the scene of a slaughter.

Armored vehicles and even tanks were toppled over like toys, blocking off some roads, and the carcusses of grounded helicopters were jutting out of the earth.

As Billy went on, the collapsed walls of stone buildings also littered his way. He climbed over a tall mound of debris, looked down, and there he saw a squad of Taliban soldiers armed with assault rifles on the other side. There were more of them than Billy could count on one hand.

Cruel laughter tore through the air.

Four tentacles flew out of the mound of rubble. They grabbed a soldier each, flailed them around in the air, then pulled their writhing forms into the mound.

"Men are so filthy!"

A giant silver arachnid came into view. Its steely gray carapace deflected the soldiers' bullets, as the woman strapped into the transparent arc of its back screamed ceaselessly.

"All men must die!"

It sliced the soldiers to bits with its rapidly moving bladed appendages just by walking through them.

...

Billy paused to take another gulp of beer, as he gave Mandy some time to take it all in. It was close to midnight when Irwin dropped them off back at the apartment, but neither of them wanted to sleep. They tried to avoid talking about anything Grim related, but Billy couldn't tell her about his time in Afghanistan without bringing up the unexpected encounter.

"He's been gathering forces," Mandy said, her head resting against his chest. "But for what?"

"Whatever it is, he wants us to be alive to see it."

"Actually...I've been thinking that maybe...he doesn't have a choice."

She touched her bottom lip to show she was thinking deeply about it.

"We're the ones that summoned him, so only we can send him back."

"How do we accomplish that?"

"We need to draw the same sigil we used to summon him, and perform a banishing ritual. But, he has to be inside of the sigil for it to work."

"Is there any other way, you know, that maybe won't get us killed?"

She frowned, turning her head slightly. "I don't know for sure, but...the bond can be broken if...either of us die."

Billy looked at her sharply. This was all news to him, and whether it was the guts they instilled in him at the army, his guilt, or the beer talking, he made a vow to himself in that dirty apartment that he would protect Mandy at all costs. They would put a stop to Grim, and this time, he wouldn't let his partner die.


	8. Finding Nergal, Part 1

In the evidence locker of the Endsville Metropolitan Police Station Nergal sat, his soul imprisoned within what was once a favorite toy; now the vessel that contained his entire existence.

Years went by, and his outlook gradually darkened. In the beginning he was hopeful that Mandy would come to his rescue somehow, but weeks dissolved into months, then months into years, and yet there was still no sign of her.

_Mandy..._

Waiting for her became Nergal's obsession, confined to his thoughts by this new body. He had grown convinced that she was the only light in his life, and the only person who could save him.

_Mandy..._

In his mind's eye, warped by half a decade of complete isolation, he received her. Like an angel sent from God himself, she swooped down from the heavens to rescue him.

Tall, elegant and nude, with glorious wings made of the sun's light, which he yearned for like the child within him did a mother's love.

"Nergal...I'm here."

The angel held him, and let him cry into her chest.

"I knew you wouldn't leave me, Mandy," he said, sniffling. "I prayed and prayed to Jesus every day just like the nuns taught us, so-"

When he looked upon the angel's face he gasped, for the skin and muscle had disappeared.

"You're not Mandy? No...what do you want?"

It held Nergal's throat, and hoisted him into the air.

...

Pud'n knew where to find Billy and Mandy because, as it turned out, he was a user - cocaine, and they were selling Irwin's supply to pay for the apartment rent.

"What do you mean it wasn't there?" Mandy snapped at him, when he showed up at their spot behind the old arcade empty handed.

"I don't know what to tell you," Pud'n said, shrugging. "I used to see that bear all the time, but it just up and vanished." He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "So since I did ya a favor, does that mean I could maybe get my stuff for free...you know, like as a reward?"

"Fuck off," Billy said, reaching for the gun in his belt tentatively.

"Okay, okay. I get the picture."

He skulked away, off to snort rows from the hood of his squad car while Billy and Mandy reassessed the situation.

"It had to have been Grim," Mandy said, seated on the folding lawn chair they brought. "He's keeping track of us somehow...damn it..."

Billy was listening, but his eyes were peeled on Pud'n pleasuring himself with the expensive crystals. Two men in trench coats approached him, and as if trench coats weren't suspicious enough, something about how close they were standing behind the off duty cop set off alarms in Billy's head. He tapped Mandy on the shoulder and directed her attention to the unfolding scene.

"What d'you guys want?" Pud'n said as he whirled around, about as angry as any addict would be toward someone that gets between them and their fix.

"Back off buckwheat, or I'll- eugh!"

In a heartbeat the knives appeared, their blades flashing under the streetlight as they were repeatedly driven into Pud'n's back, splashing his blood – in jet black arcs against the night sky – everywhere.

"Jesus christ!" Mandy screamed, as Billy sprang into action.

Pud'n tried to maneuver himself around the front of the car to get to the driver's seat, but he tripped on the sidewalk. Billy shot one in the leg and he crumbled. The other started to run, but stopped and turned around before he could duck into a shady alley.

"If you kill me, my brothers will seek revenge," he said, holding his arms out. "You'll end up just like your friend."

Billy scoffed. He glanced at where Pud'n lay: bloody and barely breathing, but alive, then looked back to the assailant that was daring him to shoot.

"Bring 'em on," Billy said, and pulled the trigger.

…

"I'm not gonna...there's no way I'll make it..." Pud'n groaned, after Billy loaded him into the back of the squad car, next to Mandy. "Just leave me..."

"No! There's a hospital up the street," Mandy said, as she fumbled through the First Aid Kit that was under the front seat. "They're gonna patch you up a lot better than I can, and you'll be fine."

She tore open his shirt to check his wounds, and the expression on her face immediately sank.

"Poison," she said gravely.

Billy clenched his teeth. "This isn't good. I've seen my fair share of snake bites."

The skin around the places where he was stabbed were turning purple and rotting away within seconds. It would certainly take more than some Band-Aids and rubbing alcohol to patch him up.

"I told you," Pud'n said, his eyelids drooping as his condition worsened. "Those guys meant business...friends of that chicken shit my buds were wailing on yesterday...I'd wager..."

"What are you talking about?" Mandy said.

"They're a bunch of weirdo hippies...from the slums...some crazy...Satanists..."

Billy looked over his shoulder. The man that he shot in the leg was crawling away, leaving a trail of blood behind him on the sidewalk. Billy quickly moved in front of him, and slammed a foot down hard on his hand.

"I'm not done with you yet, beardy. We're gonna have a nice, long talk."

Back at the car, Pud'n was coughing up blood as the toxins were spreading throughout his body. There was nothing Mandy could do, but she held his hand and didn't let go until it all stopped, and the streets were quiet.

Except...

"Billy?" She looked out the window and saw him swinging away at the cultist. "Stop, Billy! He's had enough!"

He wouldn't stop. Something was driving his fists that not even Mandy could control. "Our master will soon have you and the girl," the cultist had said, when Billy asked about the location of the Endsville sect of the Satanist church, then spat in his face.

"Not so cocky now, huh punk?"

Broken nose. Swollen eyelids. Shattered teeth. Still, the hits kept coming, and they didn't stop until the cultist was unconscious, and rendered completely unrecognizable by Billy's bare fists, and a few knocks with the butt of his pistol.

Mandy was speechless when he came to pick her up. It was at that moment she began to truly understand how much Billy had changed from the sweet, stupid little shit he was when she first met him.

"I think we should call it a night," he said after picking up their grocery bag full of pure, uncut cocaine, while massaging his bruised and bleeding knuckle. "Before I start to feel any more like the bad guy."


	9. Finding Nergal, Part 2

Mandy was sitting on a bench in Endsville Park in the middle of the night. She briefly wondered how she'd got there considering her wheelchair was nowhere in sight and neither was Billy, but she had to admit that the cool breeze felt nice and the as per usual fog-covered emptiness of the place never bothered her. On the contrary, it was somewhat relaxing to be away from people, or having to worry about the next step in her and Billy's hunt for Grim.

It was as though the very thought of the specter's name incited a change for the worse: a crow fell from the sky, dead on arrival where it met the section of pavement at Mandy's feet. Its dark down glistened from the blood that still poured forth through a deep wound in its breast.

A voice comprised of many speaking simultaneously, of a quality that can best be described as 'chaotic' within the realms of human understanding, also made its speaker's presence known.

"Time is running out, Mandy," it said, caressing the sides of her face with fingerless appendages. "You must leave Endsville _now_, before the festival of souls."

Mandy could feel the entity standing directly behind her, but an unknown force prevented her from looking. Its aura was like Grim, yet not quite the same. More gentle, and less menacing.

"What about Billy? What's going to-"

Mist in the shape of a dark tentacle wrapped around her mouth before she could finish.

"I don't care about Billy! It won't matter if you save him, because then after the festival I'll still kill him anyway."

"Why him and not me?" The entity's aura threatened to overpower Mandy, to silence her again, but she would not falter. "What is the festival? When is it? What will happen?"

"Death's holiday, tomorrow." It laughed eerily. "Everybody in Endsville will die."

Dead crows rained down again, and Mandy rolled off the bench to find shelter from the mess of claws and sharp beaks and bloody feathers beneath it as the specter remained, the ferocity of its myriad voices steadily growing with each new word it uttered.

"_One must die_, but I could never kill you Mandy! I will die again a thousand times if that's what it would take to save you!"

The rain of crowds ceased as quickly as it had ensued, with an anomalous teddy bear that was once a boy's most cherished gift from his long-forgotten biological parents; now itself forgotten and left abandoned at the base of a withered tree, but not by Mandy.

"I'm not going to let you suffer like this any more, _Nergal_." She pulled out the handgun Billy had given her and took aim at the bear as tears leaked from her determined eyes. "It's all my fault, so I'll..."

A shot rang out across the greens, right on the money.

It was the crack of dawn, and Billy was sifting through an assortment of firearms that littered the back of a flatbed truck underneath a concealing blanket of tarp at a firing range on the edge of town. Originally, guns and ammo were the the preferred form of payment between a local low rung black market trader with a heavy coke addiction and his favorite dealer – which Irwin then turned around and resold for a profit and continued to do so until the bigwig smuggling profiteers started to catch wind of the operation, which to keep a long story short resulted in the prompt 'disappearance' of one local low rung black market dealer with a heavy coke addiction, and Irwin wanting desperately to wash his hands of the whole ordeal. So it had been arranged, in return for the best guns he could find out of the bunch, Billy would do him a solid by disposing of the rest.

Billy managed to shoo the range master by simply naming his company and flashing a chipped and bloodied, but no less valid dog tag at the surly gent who smelled strongly of pine and tobacco.

Last night weighed heavily on his mind, but all he could do was kick himself in the ass over not being able to better restrain himself and keep one of Pud'n's assailants alive for questioning, because then he might have had a clearer picture of exactly what the hell was going on in Endsville.

_I have to get my shit together for her sake_, he thought with an all too familiar tinge of guilt, as he honed his sights on the bullet hole riddled 'heart' of a plastic target standing fifty meters away. _Too bad dealing with that damn Grim couldn't be this easy_. Then, a tantalizing new train of thought: _or, could it actually be this simple? Who really knows how any of this black magic bullshit works..._

A car pulled up to the curb and a woman emerged from it, removing a pair of sunglasses as she did so rather dramatically he thought. She made her way across the field of dirt and discarded beer cans and bottles toward the shooting gallery. Dressed in a jacket and gray camouflage combat pants with black boots, he watched from the corner of his eye as she stopped by the front of the truck and peered through the windshield at the slumbering Mandy in the front passenger seat.

"Whatever you're looking for, I guarantee you're not gonna find it in there," Billy said, not deigning to take his eyes away from the scope of the finest hunting rifle he'd ever handled. "Besides, what business does a pretty thing like you have at a place like this?"

Billy could feel the woman's eyes fixed on the back of his neck.

"Funny you should ask that, 'cuz you don't strike me as a hunter or for that matter, a guy who has much experience talking to ladies," she mused aloud, as she slowly proceeded around the perimeter of the truck toward him, the meticulousness of her movements whipping his combat instincts into a tizzy.

"What's with the funny look, man?" She said with a slight chuckle. "I'm here to take out my frustration same as you."

From a side holster hidden by the extent of her down-filled jacket, he could see her gripping the handle of her sidearm.

Billy wheeled around fast, his rifle's business end glaring. "Mine's already loaded, so best you stop right there."

"_Best_ you show some respect," she sneered. "I'm not here as an officer of the law, else I'd confiscate that truck full of illegal weap'ns and haul your ass off to the slammer faster than you can shake a semi-automatic, soldier." Then a cool grin spread across her lips, despite the fact that she was a currently one sneeze away from getting her head blasted off. "I'm here as an old friend, Billy boy. Mindy from Endsville High, if you recall? I've got some _information_ that'll point you in the right direction on this little quest of yours."

Billy's eyes widened a little in surprise. "How long have you been tailing us?"

"Ever since you came home. I was there at the airport when your plane landed, and stuck to you like glue up until now. I know how you combat veterans are so relax, I'm just gonna make sure we're both on the same level."

She slowly drew her Peacemaker and lined its barrel up with the bewildered Billy's face.

"Like I said I only came here to talk, but when someone's got theirs pointed at me I prefer to be pointing back."

"Start talking or pretty soon I'll be doing a lot more than pointing with this thing."


End file.
